After
his release from prison, Bal Gangadhar Tilak along with Annie Besant plunged
into the Home Rule agitation.
Home Rule meant the country would govern itself but the British monarch would
remain the head of the government.
When the government tried to place restrictions on Tilak and demanded a
personal surety bond of 20,000 rupees, he contested the order. Tilak's case
was brilliantly argued by barrister Muhammad Ali Jinnah who got the order
quashed by the court.
The Lucknow Congress of 1916 witnessed the return of Lokmanya Tilak to the
Congress. The Congress president Ambica Charan Muzumdar hailed the return of
Tilak saying that "Brothers have at last met brothers." It was at the Lucknow
Congress too that differences between the Congress and the Muslim League were
ironed out enabling the two parties to come together to work for the common
goal of self-rule.
Bal Gangadhar Tilak wrote in 'Kesari' : "When Hindus and Muslims jointly ask
for Swarajya from a common platform, the British bureaucracy has to realise
that its days are numbered."
In a public speech in Pune on December 30, 1916, Tilak made his now famous
declaration : "Swaraj is my birth right and I shall have it."
Annie Besant who initiated the Home Rule agitation, in a message to British
labourers pleaded: “Help us to become a free commonwealth under the British
crown... our people have died in your war for freedom. Will you consent that
the children of our dead shall remain a subject race?”
The Home Rule agitation was a landmark on the road to freedom. All communities
participated in the agitation.
While Tilak was busy with the Home Rule agitation, M.K. Gandhi who had
returned to India was travelling through the length and breadth of the
country. Everywhere he went he saw poverty, ignorance, superstition, prejudice
and suffering.
He was a man of action. If he found the surroundings unclean, he was quite
capable of asking for a broom and sweeping out the dirt himself. He was also a
man who could think clearly. He believed in studying a problem objectively
before chalking out a plan of action based on what he called Satya, truth and
Ahimsa, non-violence.